Thursday, 12 June 2014

Anyone who knows me or has
regularly perused my blog will be well aware that I’m a huge fan of the silent
comedy from the 1910s to 1930s. Of course this isn’t entirely true though. My love and
knowledge only extends as far as the two behemoths of the era, to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Aside from the occasional foray into the likes of
Laurel and Hardy and non-Chaplin Keystone, my understanding is limited. For a
long time I’ve wanted to get a hold of some of the films of Harold Lloyd, the
man who probably came closest to Chaplin and Keaton both then and now.
Unfortunately, unlike my two comedy heroes, his oeuvre is harder to come by and
much more expensive. I’ve started then with what is in my opinion his best
known work; Safety Last! A film
famous for its iconic still of Lloyd hanging from a clock face several stories
up a skyscraper, I thought I’d start with the obvious and work my way back.

The movie opens very strongly
with a set up that seems to suggest that the lead character, named Harold Lloyd,
is behind bars and being visited by his sweetheart and a priest. In the
background, a hangman’s noose looms. As the camera zooms out though, we learn
that he’s merely behind a fence and is in fact awaiting the arrival of a train
that will take him to the big city in search of his fortune. Lloyd promises to
make good within the year in order that he and his girl (Mildred Davis) can
marry. The establishing scene expertly sets up the next sixty-five minutes by
introducing us to the characters and their motivations as well as giving us a
great sight gag. From then on, the film goes from strength to strength.

Friday, 7 February 2014

Five days ago I got a little
giddy with excitement over the one hundredth anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s
debut screen appearance. Today, February 7th 2014 marks another
centenary; the anniversary of the first screen appearance of Chaplin’s defining
character, the little fellow, his tramp. Released on this day a century ago, Kid Auto Races at Venice was Chaplin’s
second film to be released but wasn’t the first film for which he had donned
his famous costume. Shot a few days earlier but released two days later, Mabel’s Strange Predicament is
technically the tramp’s first film. In that film though, the tramp is very much
an also ran, part of a small cast of characters who cause a ruckus in a hotel.
Here Chaplin stands alone, as he did through much of his film career.

Just eleven minutes long, though
the version I own is seven, filming took place during a soap box derby race in Venice Beach, California.
Chaplin plays a bystander, nestled in amongst the sizable crowd who stand
respectfully at the side of the track. When the tramp notices a camera filming
the event he becomes infatuated with it, making numerous attempts to get in
front of it and generally cause a bit of trouble. This isn’t appreciated by the
director who bats the tramp away. Here in his debut film, the tramp is very
much that. He’s a mischievous vagrant with no better place to be. His cruel
streak isn’t really evident but neither is the kindness of his later feature
films. He’s a character whose personality is very much still being formed. He’s
not bad and not really mean, he’s just annoying. The tramp remained an
annoyance for many of his early appearances, taking some time to develop into
the more sincere and sympathetic character he would later become.

Sunday, 2 February 2014

February 2nd 1914,
exactly one hundred years ago today saw the launch of one of the most
successful Hollywood careers in history. On
this day a century ago, a twenty-four year old Englishman called Charles
Spencer Chaplin made his screen debut in a one reel Keystone comedy called Making a Living. Eighteen months later
he would arguably become the most famous entertainer on the planet and by his
late twenties he was the richest. Being a man for whom Chaplin has a special
place in my heart, not to mention a permanent inked place on my arm, today is
something special for me and to celebrate I decided to watch his first film
exactly a century after its initial release.

Although I’ve reviewed over forty
of Chaplin’s films in the past two years on this blog, Making a Living was one that I had never seen. In a way I’m glad
that today was the first time I’d seen the short film as there’s something
interesting about seeing it for the very first time exactly a hundred years
after it was first exhibited. Chaplin plays a charming swindler called Edgar
English having not adopted his iconic Tramp costume and persona until his
second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice.
During the thirteen minute runtime, English has frequent run-ins with Henry
Lehrman’s reporter and eventually falls foul of the Keystone Kops, leading to a
chaotic and slightly confusing conclusion.

Saturday, 20 July 2013

In the late 1920s film stars,
directors and producers faced a dilemma. 1927’s The Jazz Singer had opened the world’s eyes and ears to the
talkies; movies with sound and the revolution had taken off quickly, brushing
former silent stars aside and ushering in a new era of spoken dialogue.
Arguably the biggest star of the silent era was Charlie Chaplin. His films had
been hugely popular in every corner of the globe, from London
and Los Angeles to Leningrad
and Lahore. His
universality came not only from his popular and identifiable Tramp character
but because people from any country could understand the language of the film. Each film’s themes and jokes worked in any
language and were loved by all.

It was because of The Tramp’s
universality as a silent character that caused Chaplin to shun the talkies for
a decade after they first became the norm. City
Lights was his first film produced after The Jazz Singer and he stuck to his guns, despite outside
influence, and kept The Tramp silent. The movie’s opening scene gently mocks
the new medium at a statue unveiling. The City Mayor proudly strides to a
podium to dedicate a new statue and when he speaks an amusing Donald Duck type
noise is emitted from his mouth. His lady wife then takes the stand with similar,
higher pitched results. To me this is Chaplin’s way of proving his point to the
English speaking world. We can’t understand what the characters are saying so
how would his fans in France,
Russia or Brazil
understand him if he spoke? With this opening scene we not only have our first
laugh but also a taste of an ever maturing Chaplin, a man who isn’t afraid to
express his opinions on screen.

Friday, 14 June 2013

Imagine being a big fan of The Beatles who doesn’t like Hey Jude or a car enthusiast that isn’t
keen on Ferraris. That’s the situation I find myself in when it comes to The Gold Rush. I’ve never met as big a
Charlie Chaplin fan as myself and doubt I ever will. His 1925 film saw the
beginning of his golden period, a period which lasted fifteen years before his
deportation from the US
and witnessed the production of some of his most successful films. Chaplin
remarked in his own splendid autobiography that he wanted The Gold Rush to be the film that he was remembered for and to an
extent it is. Why is it then that I don’t love his Ferrari, his Hey Jude, his Gold Rush? The Gold Rush
was amongst the first Chaplin films I saw and I had high hopes for it. When I
was initially discovering Chaplin’s work it was obvious that this was one of
his most famous and as a result, surely one of his best. Many people would
argue that it is. I was instantly disappointed though with a film that I felt
was short of laughter and featuring a plot which I cared little for. The story
certainly beats some of his earlier shorts and it’s better written and deeper
than say his follow-up The Circus but
it doesn’t really do anything for me. It feels like the plot of a short that
has been stretched to breaking point and isn’t as sweet, dramatic or
sophisticated as the likes of The Kid
or City Lights.

Saturday, 1 June 2013

Sherlock Jr is rightly considered as one of the many great films of
Buster Keaton’s career. The movie introduces many technical innovations and
complex stunts which run side by side the screen comedian’s usual deadpan
humour and sight gags to create one of his and the era’s best. A lowly movie
theatre projectionist (Keaton) has two dreams in life. He wants to be a
detective and wants to snare the love of his life. After being framed by a love
rival for a burglary at the girl’s house he is banished, told never to return.
His attempts to solve the crime and clear his name come to a dead end so he
returns to the cinema where he falls asleep behind the projector. Here, the man
literally splits in two (using double exposure) and the dream version of Sherlock
Jr enters the movie screen where he has much more success at solving crimes and
attracting the attention of beautiful women.

Few films from the era (or any
era) display as much inventiveness or technical nouse as Sherlock Jr. Working at a time before many of the cinematic
inventions that we take for granted today, including sound of course, Keaton
here constructs a beautifully observed comedy which combines the detective
genre with an introspective study of his medium while using romance as a framing
device. The movie is, at just forty-four minutes, much shorter than most of his
features, straddling somewhere between short and feature but barely a second of
screen time is wasted with jokes coming thick and fast. If comedy ever does run
dry, the eyes are dazzled with a technical marvel or bone crunching stunt which
ninety years on, will still make the audience wince.

Sunday, 26 May 2013

Charlie Chaplin’s 1923 film A Woman of Paris is a film full of
firsts. It was his first films released by United Artists, the company he had
co-founded four years earlier. It was his first dramatic film, featuring no
slapstick comedy at all and it was his first film in which he did not star. It
was also a film of lasts. After a fruitful eight year relationship, this was
Chaplin’s final film to feature Edna Purviance and it was also his last purely
dramatic picture. The movie was warmly received by critics who praised its bold
themes, underplayed acting and assured direction but for the public it was a
different matter. It’s difficult to quantify Chaplin’s appeal and fame for
modern audiences but up to that point no person in the movies was paid more. Upon
his first return to London
after his American success, literally hundreds of thousands of people turned
out to welcome him home. It is arguable that no entertainer has ever been as
famous as Charlie Chaplin was in the first half of the twentieth century.

So, when audiences eagerly
flocked to their cinemas in 1923 for the latest Chaplin feature only to find
that the man himself wasn’t on screen, it’s easy to understand their
disappointment. Imagine paying for another Pirates
of the Caribbean film only to discover that there was no Johnny Depp and no
pirates. Now image that the Pirate of the
Caribbean films were actually good and you get some understanding of the
disappointment audiences must have felt. To his credit, Chaplin did attempt to
get word out that this was going to be an atypical film with flyers handed out
to the long cinema queues and the film actually opens with a disclaimer stating
that “I do not appear in this picture” and that it is intended as a “serious
drama”. Had the audience been aware of this before the film opened, their
reaction might have been very different but instead it was a commercial failure
and wasn’t seen again for over fifty years when Chaplin reissued it with a new,
self composed score in what was to be the final piece of work before his death
in 1977.

Last year I watched and reviewed
over forty films made by one of my cinematic heroes, Charlie Chaplin. It’s
taken a while but after cataloguing all of his Essanay, Mutual and First National Films, I’ve come back to the tramp to look at the final portion of his
career. Even as I write these words I realise how absurd ‘final portion’ sounds
as the years I’m looking at cover over four decades and include his first
dramatic film, his first talkie and his final British films following his exile
from his adopted United States. This period also coincides with what is today,
his most iconic era; the fifteen years between 1925’s The Gold Rush and 1940’s The
Great Dictator. Despite having been one of the most famous men in the world
for over a decade, 1925 marks the beginning of the era which still defines
Chaplin’s motion picture career. It was between the years of 1925-40 that he
created some of the most essential comedy moments in film history and all but
one of his films from this period has been added to the US National Film
Registry. For me and indeed many film fans these films are gems but as with
many of the silent shorts that I reviewed last year, some of the films
surrounding this golden period will be new to me.

Most of the films listed below were produced through United Artists, the company co-founded by Chaplin and fellow stars D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks (pictured above). The company is still going strong today but lost its independence in 1967 and is now a subsidiary of MGM. I have, in the past year and a
half, reviewed some of the films on this list already but I’ll be watching the
rest in order and may decide to re-watch the ones I have seen anyway. As usual
you can click on a film’s title to read my full review.

Sunday, 3 February 2013

Charlie Chaplin’s shortest feature or longest short,
depending on which way you’d like to view it, is important for a number of
reasons. Not only was it his final short film before moving to features
permanently but it was also his last film to co star Edna Purviance. Purviance
stared in over thirty of Chaplin’s films and was his leading lady for eight
years but The Pilgrim was her final
major onscreen appearance with Chaplin*. The movie also bought to an end a
fruitful relationship with The First National Film Company. Following this film
Chaplin would produce his final films with United Artists, the company he
founded with D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Those films
would go on to define Chaplin’s long career.

Besides the above reasons there is little worth remembering
about The Pilgrim and for me it is a
bit of a blot on an otherwise successful era for Chaplin. The Pilgrim begins slowly and never kicks into a high gear. There
is very little humour or comedy of any sort and the story, while occasionally attention-grabbing,
didn’t do anything for me. The ending was nice but The Pilgrim isn’t a film I’ll be returning to in a hurry. In a
typical case of mistaken identity an escaped convict (Charlie Chaplin) dresses
as a preacher and takes a train to Texas
where he is immediately taken for a small town’s new Church leader. His past
comes back to haunt him though as an old friend makes a surprise appearance.

Tuesday, 29 January 2013

A Chaplin short made during a lull in production by the
former prolific film maker, Pay Day
is an above average and clever film that finds Charlie Chaplin as an expert
bricklayer on pay day. Following building site shenanigans Chaplin discovers
that his pay is short and that his overbearing wife wants more than her share.
After managing to hide some from her he heads out for a night on the town.

Chaplin once described Pay
Day as the favourite of his short films which is a bold statement as he
made over seventy of them. This isn’t my favourite Chaplin short and it is far
from his funniest but it’s a very clever film which features some intriguing camera
and editing processes and a fine story plus just enough jokes to keep the
audience laughing.

Sunday, 9 December 2012

Undoubtedly Chaplin’s finest film of the period and one of
the highlights of his long career, The
Kid was not only his first feature film but also in my opinion his first
great work. Produced at a difficult time in the star’s life, The Kid is the first of several Chaplin
films which perfectly balanced comedy, drama and pathos. His previous films had
often contained at least one of these elements and earlier films such as A Dog's Life and The Immigrant had provided at least two, but for the first time in
1921, despite personal tragedy and pressure from his studio, Chaplin created
his first true masterpiece.

Production began in 1919 just ten days after the death of
Chaplin’s baby son Norman. Chaplin, who had been struggling creatively, was
instantly hit with an idea that was to become The Kid. As his Tramp character Chaplin finds a baby who has been
abandoned by a poor single mother (Edna Purviance). The Tramp ends up raising
the child alone and when he is around six or seven the child (Jackie Coogan)
helps his adoptive father in his window repair business. The father follows the
boy around town as the boy breaks windows. Soon after being smashed, the man
turns up to repair them. All is well until the boy falls sick and a Doctor
realises the Tramp is not the natural father. Soon after Social Services arrive
to take the boy from the man in what is one of the most gut wrenchingly moving scenes
in cinema history.

Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Although often regarded as Chaplin’s least funny First National film, A Day’s Pleasure is a
simple but effective two reel comedy which considering the circumstances behind
its creation, is something of a triumph. While Chaplin was busy working on his
first great film, The Kid, the studio
were growing impatient with his lack of output so he hastily put together A Day’s Pleasure, a seventeen minute
romp set around a family outing aboard a boat. While the film lacks the sort of
story and romance of the films Chaplin was capable of producing at the time, it
does feature some clever slapstick and laugh out loud moments.

The movie is notable for two brief cameos. The first is a
shot of The Chaplin Studios, seen in the background of the opening scene.
Although only briefly glimpsed, you can clearly see its isolation, allowing one
to note how L.A has grown over the last ninety years. The second cameo comes
from Jackie Coogan, the boy made famous by his heartfelt performance in Chaplin’s
next film, The Kid. Coogan is barely
seen though and has no role other than to sit in a car and get carried onto the
boat by his father. The only other actor to have much of a part is Tom Wilson,
a man who appeared in four of Chaplin’s films as well as D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance
and Birth of a Nation as well as over two-hundred more. Wilson plays a man with whom Charlie fights
following a spousal mix-up. Even Edna Purviance goes without character here,
perhaps going to show how rushed the production was.

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

When a workshy farmhand (Charlie Chaplin) misplaces a herd
of cows the local town of Sunnyside
suffers the consequences. The young farmhand has even more trouble on his hands
when a well to do city boy (Tom Terriss) arrives in town and has his eyes
firmly set on the hand’s girl (Edna Purviance). Chaplin’s forth film for First National was preceded by the hugely successful Shoulder Arms and proved to be one of his least successful of the
period. Despite this the film holds up fairly well today and has a first act
which is of some note. Unfortunately though the film misses a step with the
introduction of the romantic plot from which it never truly recovers.

The first thing I noticed about the film is that unlike
almost every Chaplin film to come before, there was an actor on second billing.
Most of Chaplin’s early title cards read something along the line of “Charles
Chaplin in…” or “….. with Charlie Chaplin” but Sunnyside reads “Charlie Chaplin in Sunnyside with Edna Purviance”.
I don’t recall seeing another actor’s name so prominently placed on a title
card before this film and it perhaps shows Chaplin’s ever increasing belief in
his leading lady as an actress. As it turns out, Purviance’s role isn’t really
much larger than in the likes of Burlesque on Carmen, The Vagabond or A Dog's Life but it feels like she is the focus of attention for a larger part of
the film.

Saturday, 3 November 2012

Set partly amongst the trenches of the First World War, Shoulder Arms was a bold film for
Charlie Chaplin to make in 1918 given the wide reaching criticism he received
for failing to sign up to fight. He was advised by close friends to abandon the
film for something less controversial but Charlie battled on and despite the
possible outrage and backlash the film became Chaplin’s most critically
acclaimed and financially successful film up to that point, was particularly
popular with returning Doughboys and features a couple of scenes which may well
be recognisable to people who have never even seen a full Chaplin film.

Charlie plays a young recruit who is sent over to France to join
the war. Despite typical problems to begin with he soon discovers that he is a
more than competent soldier and after numerous brave exploits ends up in the
house of a French woman (Edna Purviance) who tends to his wounds. With the help
of his new love and a dear friend from the trenches, Chaplin ends up winning
the war for the allies. Or does he?

Monday, 15 October 2012

Charlie Chaplin’s first short for First National Pictures
was released in April 1918, six months after his final film for Mutual. Chaplin
in his Tramp character befriends a local mongrel dog called Scraps and together
they go about causing mischief and mayhem. Later, Scraps comes to the aid of
the Tramp when he gets into trouble with some thugs and helps his master set up
a new life for himself and his new lady friend, a bar singer (Edna Purviance).

What was immediately obvious about this opening First National film was its quality. The sets, costume and story are all far superior
to pretty much anything seen in a Chaplin film before. The sets especially look
as though they may well have been real streets. There is a much more rounded
story which incorporates comedy as one aspect rather than relying solely on
kicks up the backside or doffing caps to curbs. The film is still funny but
this isn’t one of Chaplin’s finest works. What it is though is one of his
finest stories to date and overall one of his best short films.

Having ended his contract with the Mutual Film Corporation
amicably, Charlie Chaplin signed the world’s first One Million Dollar movie
contract in June 1918. This contract gave him total control over production for
a return of eight films. Chaplin decided to build a new studio off Sunset
Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The famous Chaplin Studios were
designed in the style of English country cottages and contained everything
Chaplin would need to develop, film and cut his movies. Chaplin eventually sold
the studios in 1953 and they are now owned by Jim Henson Company.

Chaplin began work on his first film for First National in
early 1918 and A Dog’s Life was
released in April. Over the next four years Chaplin shot eight films at his new
studio for First National during one of the most turbulent times of his career.
In September 1918 he married the seventeen year old actress Mildred Harris in
what was and still is a highly controversial marriage. Harris lied to Chaplin
about being pregnant and the marriage ended in a messy divorce in 1920. During
the same period the star became frustrated with First National’s impatience and
lack of concern for quality and in 1919, while still under contract with First
National created United Artists with fellow actors and directors Mary Pickford,
Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith. The venture which was self funded and
offered the Hollywood
stars the chance to work freely and independently although Chaplin himself
didn’t make a film with the company until 1922 as he was still under contract
with First National.

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Chaplin’s final film in his Mutual contract and marking the
end of a brief but fruitful relationship is The
Adventurer. A convict (Chaplin) is on the run from Prison Guards on the
coast when he hears the sounds of people crying out for help. He comes across three
people who are drowning having fallen off a nearby pier and saves each of them
one by one. One of the people he saves is an attractive young woman (Edna
Purviance) who invites the man back to her house to rest without knowing his
past. As the two begin to get on very well, the convict’s past catches up with
him thanks to the persistence of the young girl’s suitor (Eric Campbell).

Chaplin’s final outing for Mutual is a more than decent
short which features some genuinely laugh out loud moments in addition to a
well tailored story and plenty of trademark slapstick. What makes it stand out
for me though is not only was it the last film Chaplin made for the Mutual Corporation
but it was also his last to feature regular adversary Eric Campbell who
tragically died just a couple of months after the film’s release in a drink driving
accident. Chaplin and Campbell were very close friends, living next door to one
another when the latter died and Chaplin never again cast a regular actor to
play his antagonist.

Thursday, 4 October 2012

An improvement on the comedy of Easy Street but a film with much more of a slapstick nature, The Cure finds Charlie Chaplin playing
an inebriate who checks into a health spa in order to get sober. His huge suitcase
though is full to bursting with bottles of liquor which find their way into the
health spa’s well with disastrous consequences. Along the way Chaplin befriends
Edna Purviance after saving her from the clutches of the wicked Eric Campbell.

This is a short that is packed full of gags, some of which
are a little repetitive but many hit the nail on the head. It also features a
larger role for Chaplin regular John Rand who appears in most of Chaplin’s Mutual Films but usually just has a walk on role. In The Cure he has almost as much screen time as Campbell and
Purviance but doesn’t make as much of an impact on the film as Chaplin’s two
main collaborators. The story is tight but not wide reaching and is a lot more
basic than many of the films from the same period, but what it lacks in story
it makes up for with laughs. Chaplin’s dizziness following his turn in the
revolving door also gave him the same symptoms as he showed nearly twenty years
later in Modern Times when he ‘took’
cocaine. His walk and spinning was almost identical and equally amusing.

Sunday, 30 September 2012

Charlie Chaplin as his Tramp character is asleep outside a Mission, close to the
danger filled and lawless Easy Street. After being partially reformed by the Mission where he meets a
beautiful young woman (Edna Purviance), the Tramp decides to join the Police
and is immediately sent out on the beat to Easy Street, a road from where
Police return battered and bruised. Through luck and wit the new Policeman
tries to reform the street and return it to the local residents.

Comedy wise this is probably the most disappointing of
Chaplin’s Mutual Films that I’ve seen so far. In the entire film I only laughed
out loud once and generally there were very few funny moments anywhere. What the
film does contain though is another tender story about overcoming the odds,
hard work, temperance and love which is something that Chaplin was becoming the
master of at this stage of his career.

Tuesday, 11 September 2012

A waiter (Charlie Chaplin) gets into trademark mischief at
work and then goes to a skating rink on his lunch break. There he meets a
pretty girl (Edna Purviance) and the two of them hit it off. The waiter has a
confrontation though with a customer (Eric Campbell) who recognises him from
the restaurant and the two start bickering and fighting while skating. Having
left the rink, the girl invites the waiter to her skating party that night but instead
of revealing his real job he tells her that he is Sir Cecil Seltzer. Later, at
the party, people who had met during the day once again meet up as various
strands of the story come together, resulting in a fast paced chase ending.

I was a little bored by the first half of this film which
was set mainly in a restaurant, but my enjoyment grew as the action turned to
the rink. There Chaplin was able to showcase his remarkable skating skills and
ability to bully his co star Eric Campbell in an ever changing variety of ways.
The second half more than makes up for the lacklustre opening and left me with
a smile on my face if not a laughter induced stomach ache.